Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
Sharif assumed power with much greater advantages than his
predecessor had enjoyed. His accession to power brought a rare
harmony to the power troika – President, Prime Minister and Chief of
Army Staff.
But this harmony was not to last: Sharif sought to wear down
constraints on his power imposed by his old patrons – the military.
The rivalry between Sharif and the army reached a peak in 1992, when
Sharif picked General Javed Nasir for the post of director general of
the ISI, against the advice of his most senior advisers. A born-again
Muslim, the bearded General Nasir saw himself as a visionary. The
General, who made no secret of his radical religious beliefs and
his association with the ‘Tablighi Jamaat’, was widely believed to
be personally associated with the ISI’s adventurous policy actions
during his brief tenure. General Nasir’s religious zeal and maverick
actions became embarrassing for the military high command, which
had completely lost control over the country’s premier spy agency. It
was never clear whether some of the activities General Nasir engaged
the ISI in had the government’s sanction or whether the overzealous
spymaster was exceeding his mandate.
General Nasir widened the ISI’s covert operation beyond Kashmir
and Afghanistan. During his tenure, the spy agency was accused of
masterminding a series of bomb blasts in the Indian financial capital
of Mumbai in March 1993, which killed hundreds of people. The
bombing was allegedly carried out by a Bombay crime mafia, headed
by Dawood Ibrahim, to avenge the demolition of the sixteenth-century
Babri Mosque by Hindu extremists. Ibrahim, who was top of a list
of 20 fugitives that India wanted Pakistan to hand over, lived in the
Pakistani city of Karachi under ISI protection. He was also put on
the global terrorist list. The allegation about the ISI’s involvement in
fanning cross-border strife, landed Pakistan in serious trouble.
In May 1992, the USA issued a warning that it could declare Pakistan a
terrorist state. Washington’s main concern was that Pakistan continued
to provide material support to the Islamic militants in Kashmir and
the Sikh insurgents in the Indian state of Punjab, despite Islamabad’s
repeated assurances that no official agency was involved there. 26 The
CIA director, John Woolsey, reported that the ISI was fanning conflict
in the region. In a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1992, the
US Secretary of State, James Baker, warned that the ISI’s material
support to the groups that had engaged in terrorism could lead to the
imposition of a package of sanctions against Pakistan.